Last weeked we joined the ARI italian contest 40 & 80 meters. Even if I’ve never enjoyed so much the italian only competitions, I must admit that I’ve been enthusiast.I operated the IQ5FI, club station, during the day-light hours, so, mostly on fourty meters, and has been a surprise for me, since the frequency was very very busy. SSB contacts were very difficult due to the high QRM and due to the quick change of propagation with fast openings to north and then to south (we are located in the center).

So happened a couple of times, that while I was calling CQ and making contacts into an apparently free frequency, ather a repentine propagation change, stations were reclaming the same frequency because according to them, they were using that short piece of fourty since several minutes…. (and we too) HI !

During high QRM conditions, RTTY and CW contacts payed a lot.

We made 546 QSO’s in the 24 hours, scoring 118000 points, much better than the previous year were we made just 80000.

As for the CQWW SSB, I’ve taken a couple of minutes of recordings, that I’ve edited and published today on Youtube. Most of dialogs are in italian of course, but I’m sure you will be able to understand most of the QSOs…

Watch and comment video on YouTube

Technorati Tags: ham radio, contest, ari, amateur radio, contesting, video

Finally new QSL cards has arrived. Myself and other local hams have been very impressed with the high quality of these cards. I promised in a previous post to give a final opinion on IT9EJW products quality. It’s a 5/5 stars. List of world wide QSL Printers
Price for 1500 QSL cards has been 100 Euros P&P included. Delivery time since order has been aprox 1 month.
Last friday I’ve been able to send out my QSL cards for QSO I’ve done in these months. In order to speed up the process I’ve used the BV7 label program by DF3CB, I’ve choosed that program among a list of QSL Software.
Is really well done label printing program develobed by hams for hams, it allow import of ADIF log files, and allow to use standard label sheet papers sizes, or to create custom one. I choosed the second way. The program includes a graphical drawing interface where you can draw the content of your label, choose custom graphic, or add or remove fields.
It works correctly with multiples QSOs, and can manage several QSL Manager databases, where you can lookup for missing managaers in case you forgot it in your logging program. I’m currently using Ham Radio Deluxe, and this cool freeware currently lack of a label printing feature. Now I’m looking to see what will be the QSL sent/returned ratio.

Technorati Tags: ham radio, qsl, amateur radio, dx, qsl cards, dx